NVIDIA’s connector story: EPS vs. 12VHPWR Connector - Unfortunately, good doesn’t always win, but evil wins more and more often (insights) | igor´sLAB
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After numerous articles, explanations, and follow-up tests, today we’re taking a different approach. I have three intriguing topics for you: the possible origin story of the 12VHPWR connector…
  • capn_hectorBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    Talk about burying the lede in the last segment. Asus isn’t using the official connector and every other vendor thinks their connector is risky and probably defective. That’s not on nvidia, other than allowing it (and this is the reason why they ride partners’ asses sometimes on approval/etc).

    The rest of the stuff is Igor still grinding the same old axe (pretty sure astron knows how to make a connector, if the connector is so delicate it would be broken by GN’s physical testing, etc) but if asus isn’t using the official connector and they’re disproportionately making up a huge number of the failures, that’s really an asus problem.

  • jammsessionBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    My summary of that whole 12VHPWR situation:

    • Still no hard data on failure rates. We simply don’t know if the 12VHPWR is more error-prone. There is however less wiggle room for imperfections because 600W is a lot of power.

    • Igor writes like NVIDIA is some kind of bad villain that infiltrated the PCI SIG. I have no idea how the PCI SIG works, I simply find it laughable to think that NVIDIA can dictate stuff to the PCI SIG. It is a consortium with experts from AMD, NVIDIA, Intel, and many, many more people and companies. To suggest otherwise is dishonest.

    • There were badly produced ASTRON adapters

    • CableMod adapters are a stupid idea to begin with. Unlike a cable, a hard PCB has no wiggle room and thus can not compensate for a non-perfect production.

    • Flipped ASUS design is a bad idea

    • Igor again argues that NVIDIA tried to blame users for user errors. I agree that there could have been a better design that allows for more wiggle room and user error. But then again, without any numbers on how many cards actually failed it is hard to tell. What if this is not really an issue in real life? What if besides ASTRON, ASUS, and CableMod adapters, millions of cards work flawlessly and only a handful of users are affected? Even to Igor’s own numbers (which he got from CableMod), if we leave out the twisted ASUS design, it is an extremely small issue.

    • Igor again argues that NVIDIA blames users because it would have affected Q3 results negatively. Assuming this is true, why did it not affect later quarterly results? Also, why should any at NVIDIA care? Because otherwise, they would have to do insider trading and sell their stocks before the bad news. That is not how it works.

    • PCI acknowledged design flows and came up with 12V-2×6. You could now scream “See?! The old 12VHPWR was bad! That is why they changed it!” but that does not have to be true. If a Boeing crashed, because there was ice on the ground speed sensor, it is easy to say “Well, there needs to be redundancy and some kind of heating, this is a stupid design to begin with, how did the FAA approve that? Boeing probably pressured the FAA! And they hide the truth because quarterly earnings are up.” If Boeing then does implement these changes, it is still not a gotcha moment.

    I like the work Igor has done here. These old-school electrical engineers who later switched or grew into IT are very much needed. They offer excellent knowledge. And I think if we look at Igor’s reporting, we can feel that he had a lot of fun and put his heart into it. But it also affected his objectivity. He himself acknowledges that! That is not easy, hats off!